Iron Man 3 and the Art of Missing the Point

I don’t generally use FAIR Blog to argue with film critics, but sometimes a review leaves me wondering: Did the critic and I see the same movie?

Such is the case with Iron Man 3 and its New York Times review by Manohla Dargis (5/3/13), headlined “Bang, Boom: Terrorism as a Game.” Here’s the essence of her take on the film:

Iron Man 3 is conspicuously meant to be escapist entertainment…. But Mr. Black and his colleagues, like other filmmakers who use the iconography of September 11 and its aftershocks, want to have it both ways.

They want to tap into the powerful reactions those events induced, while dodging the complex issues and especially the political arguments that might turn off ticket buyers. The result is that in some movies September 11–along with Afghanistan, Iraq, terrorism, the war on terror and torture –registers as just a device, at once inherently political and empty, in a filmmaker’s tool kit.

Now, Dargis says critics at the screening she attended were urged by a studio publicist not to divulge critical plot details, a request that made her wonder “what I could possibly divulge that would spoil the pleasure of an innocent ticket buyer.” In fact, the film’s plot hinges on a major twist–and I don’t think it’s possible to explain how peculiar her take on the film is without at least hinting at what that twist involves. So if you haven’t seen it, might still want to see it and like to be surprised, you should probably stop reading here.

Iron Man 3’s “Iron Patriot”: Beware of rebranding.

The argument of the film, essentially, is that terrorists and the military contractors who fight terrorism are actually on the same side–and both in the business of terror to profit from it. It suggests that you should worry less about supervillains making “death to America” videos and more about sinister vice presidents. It also urges you to be skeptical when weapon systems are rebranded from “War Machine” to “Iron Patriot.”

Whereas in the previous Iron Man movies, the hero Tony Stark generally wears his super-powered armor, in this incarnation the suits are more often deployed as remote-controlled flying weapon platforms–evoking the rise of drone technology. In this context, the fact that Stark chooses to destroy his suits at the end of the film–and at the same time remove the shrapnel from his heart that made him need to wear the armor in the first place–is a political message that’s not particularly hard to decipher.

Yet fail to decipher it Dargis evidently did. If she objected to the film’s politics, I wouldn’t be writing this post, but instead she asserts, at length, that the film has no politics whatsoever:

Iron Man 3…at once invokes September 11 and dodges it, and does so with a wink and a smile. It’s not the first movie to do so, by any means. But the proximity of its highly publicized release to the Boston Marathon bombings simply makes it the latest, most conspicuous example of how profoundly disconnected big studio movies of this sort are from the world in which the rest of us live.

The point isn’t that movies like Iron Man 3 don’t have any business taking on tough issues. The point is that…they should take on the toughest issues–not just exploit them.

As an example of the kind of filmmaker willing to take on tough issues, she cites Steven Soderbergh–whose latest movie, the drug industry thriller Side Effects, is actually far less political than Shane Black’s Iron Man 3, with a plot twist that neutralizes all social issues. She quotes his recent speech at a film festival:

Mr. Soderbergh said he thought that the country still has post-traumatic stress disorder “and that we haven’t really healed in any sort of complete way and that people are, as a result, looking more toward escapist entertainment.”

This is how Robert Downey Jr. tries to convey post-traumatic stress.

Which is an odd thing to quote as an attack on Iron Man 3, because in that film Tony Stark is literally suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder from the horrors his character experienced in the film The Avengers–events that are repeatedly referred to in IM3 by the shorthand “New York,” if the analogy were not clear enough. But rather than giving Black credit for taking on the very issue that Soderbergh highlights–or, say, criticizing him for doing so in a heavy-handed way–she seems to have missed the fact that the title character is suffering from PTSD altogether:

Originality isn’t the point of a product like Iron Man 3, which, despite the needless addition of 3-D and negligible differences in quips, gadgets, villains and the type of stuff blown up, plays out much like the first two movies…. Once again, Tony Stark aka Iron Man aka Robert Downey Jr. jokes and poses, wears his superhero suit and flirts with Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow)…. He essentially functions as the delivery system for a repertory of Tony Stark poses, gestures, expressions and line readings that, with his superhero costume, established the Iron Man brand on screen.

Again, you could argue that Downey portrays PTSD well or poorly. But to not notice that the character is suddenly having dramatic anxiety attacks and days-long bouts of insomnia, explicitly as a result of experiences that evoke September 11–it makes me wonder whether Dargis actually did watch the same movie I did, or whether perhaps instead of watching the film, she was typing up a review claiming she’d already seen it.

Extra! Magazine Editor Since 1990, Jim Naureckas has been the editor of Extra!, FAIR's monthly journal of media criticism. He is the co-author of The Way Things Aren't: Rush Limbaugh's Reign of Error, and co-editor of The FAIR Reader: An Extra! Review of Press and Politics in the '90s. He is also the co-manager of FAIR's website. He has worked as an investigative reporter for the newspaper In These Times, where he covered the Iran-Contra scandal, and was managing editor of the Washington Report on the Hemisphere, a newsletter on Latin America. Jim was born in Libertyville, Illinois, in 1964, and graduated from Stanford University in 1985 with a bachelor's degree in political science. Since 1997 he has been married to Janine Jackson, FAIR's program director. You can follow Jim on Twitter at @JNaureckas.

Tony Stark is the weapons industry. Jim of “FAIR” chooses to right a review and I don’t think it’s “fair” that he fails to note the sexism of the film, somehow he misses the treatment of sexual slavery and everything else. It’s amazing what Natalie Wilson caught at Ms. that Jim misses.

Heather the whole point of the first two movies is that Tony Stark is out of the weapons industry. Something hard to fathom in reality. PTSD has infected more and more people who are caught up in the USA’s Global War On Terror. (We only hear about our own soldiers not the millions of others in NATO and all the countries they are killing in.

Don’t forget all the wounded soldiers that were helped by AIM but also turned them into fire mutants and bombs. (Remember only about a third of them were used by “The Mandarin” as terror bombs the rest not. It is all in the sales and marketing.

Ok this has to be one of the worst movie reviews I have ever read . Let me take this line by line : Ok yea the bunny was completely stupid , yes the whole damsel in distress story line is so tired . But where the script writers went bad , you went so much worse . Somehow being a “movie critic” you failed to see the underlying story line of Tony having PTSD from the battle in New York in the Avengers film . When she comes home she is not the ‘nagging girlfriend’ , she is struggling to understand his behavior because not even Tony in the beginning of the movie is sure what is going on with him . You managed to take a serious plot line of a couple struggling to deal with a serious mental disorder and turn it into ‘a man tinkering with his boy-toys’ and a ‘nagging girlfriend’ . And also in the scene where they are in bed Tony is clearly having an mental episode while he is sleeping which promps the iron man suit to react , in no way was this intended as a veiled “condoning the threat of violence” Tony in no way lashes out at Pepper . And in that scene she is not seen as ” too-demanding, overly self-centered girlfriend” she is 1.) scared and 2.) at a loss to deal with his issues . And the fact that Tony can save both the president and Pepper has ZERO to do with the fact that he has a dick in between his legs as you so eloquently put it : “Being male, Tony is of course able to maneuver to save both.” . And the line about “That was really violent,” was said by Pepper herself not Tony . And she says this because Pepper as we have seen is in no way a violent person , it has nothing to do with her having a vagina . And yes the line about her wearing workout clothes all the time was stupid and unnecessary . And her “going back into girlfriend mode” and him destroying all of the iron man suits was 1st of all his idea 2nd it wasn’t a sign of her being a “controlling, buzz-kill girlfriend” it was him trying to get over his PTSD issues , which was the reason he created all of them because he felt powerless and “Tony Stark: I have a lot of apologies to make… Nothing’s been the same since New York. You experience things, and then they’re over. I can’t sleep, and when I do I have nightmares. Honestly, there’s a hundred people who want to kill me. I hope I can protect the one thing I can’t live without…”(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1300854/trivia?tab=qt&ref_=tt_trv_qu) a result of his PTSD . And in the scene where he fixes his heart that was his idea not hers , she did not kill his “superness” , because it was never her idea . And finally it is Pepper who saves Tony from Killian at the end of the movie .
– Love ,
Someone who actually bothered to watch the fucking movie .

Hey people….We are talking about a bit of fluff, and comic book fantasy here right?Who gives a rats ass?I cant believe so much wordage is being wasted on this zoom boom BAM movie.You want real evil…..Check out those Tela tubbies.Something weird going on there folks.Real weird

I think you are on point with your review about the review. The one thing I’d add, however, is that it seems to me that the reason that Dargis misses the politics is that it doesn’t fit her understanding of what the politics would be. After all, there were no Muslim fundamentalists plotting the downfall of the nation–no cryptic other seeking the death of democracy; there was the banal reality that the real politics happens behind the spectacle created for consumption. I think it required a paradigm shift the original review couldn’t follow.

Brandon here. I have been a fan of Iron man for as long as I can remember and read your review thoroughly and undoubtedly enjoyed each and every moment of it with no worries whatsoever. You are correct on not everything you say but most of the things you have mentioned in this article. You are a great blog writer and I can not wait to read more.

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